Vegas, Healthy Traveling and Kris Carr

February 22, 2013

My man and I were in Las Vegas recently and we wanted to stay as healthy as we could on the trip. I started out by packing my Vitamix. Yes, it’s heavy. But, I was able to pack the pitcher with the blades in my checked baggage (they won’t let you carry that part on) and I put the bottom base/motor in my carry on bag which fit right under the seat on the airplane.

I knew we would be able to make smoothies in the hotel room, but I also knew that we would need an empty refrigerator. I called the hotel ahead of time and requested that an extra fridge be put in the room “for medical purposes”. Hotels always have extra mini-fridges on hand, so you just have to ask. Considering the fact that I view food as medicine, I wasn’t really lying. My boyfriend, aside from being amazing, is also dairy-free and gluten-free so we both wanted (and needed) that extra fridge.

Why couldn’t we just empty out the mini-bar fridge? Well in Vegas, at this particular hotel, the mini-bar fridge is magnetized and weighted, so if you even so much as lift up a bottle, you get charged for it. We weren’t about to touch it. They delivered the extra fridge to our room after we checked in and we were off to Whole Foods in Town Square – about a mile off the main Strip in Vegas- to do some shopping!

We stocked up on smoothie making items and made smoothies in our hotel room every morning. That saved us lots of money on breakfasts! We restocked our ice bucket from the ice machine down the hall and used that instead of using frozen fruit (our extra mini fridge did not have a freezer) and we used fresh fruit and almond milk. We used the wine glasses and water glasses that came stocked in the room and just rinsed them out afterwards to re-use them later in the evening (for wine of course)…it IS Vegas afterall! 😉

One thing that I was so happy and blown away to see was a veggie hot food bar with this beautiful lady’s face on it…the ever fabulous KRIS CARR! Every single Whole Foods needs one of these food bars!

How awesome is this?!!!! They must have thought I was bananas whipping out my phone to snap photos, but I couldn’t believe my eyes. So cool! Kudos to Kris Carr for knocking down walls and kicking in doors in the world of food and health!

High Five, Sista!

We got back to our hotel room and created our own version of a mini-bar, only ours was much healthier (and much more affordable!)

Our mini-bar started on the left with the Vitamix and ended at the bananas and larabars. Everything to the right of that came with the hotel room, but we made sure we were fully stocked so we never had a desire to open any of it.

We had our fill of fancy restaurants for dinner while in Vegas and a lot of them do have very healthy options as well as gluten-free and vegan menus. Especially the Wynn and Encore – where there is a vegan menu at every restaurant (Steve Wynn himself went vegan, hence the addition of the vegan menus). So if you are traveling to Vegas and you are vegan, definitely check out the Wynn.

We stayed at the Mandalay Bay which we both really enjoyed – it wasn’t as sensory overload as some of the other hotels can be with all the glittering lights and sounds and the service was excellent. Very responsive and accommodating!

Next time you are headed on a trip and staying in a hotel, pack your Vitamix (or any blender) and request an extra fridge “for medical purposes”. Take a taxi to the nearest grocery store and stock up on some produce. Fruit is great to get because (for the most part) it doesn’t require any refrigeration, so you can just pile that up in your hotel room. If you can’t get an extra fridge, buy one of those inexpensive coolers at the grocery store or pack an insulated bag that you can fill with ice each day and store your cold produce in there.

You CAN still maintain a level of “healthy” while traveling…even when you are headed to Vegas!

Stephanie, I totally gasped! It was a definite OMG moment! I wanted a megaphone so I could tell everyone in the store to come look! 🙂 Really hoping that these go into all of the Whole Foods!!! All of the dishes looked wonderful!